Vigilent Watch

I watch for it every day. I listen for it in the quiet. I wait for it to come. Judgment looms just beyond each step I take. My soul cries out so loud that the windows and the doors shake and the neighbors who hear my mournful cry look out their windows into the still night and wonder what could make such a noise. I open my eyes and I am alone with them... my inner demons... we wage war. Their doubt and fear plague me and as I struggle to break free from the brokeness that entangles me I search around me for something solid to hold on to.

There in the dim light of the morning I find peace and forgiveness sleeping next to me and I stare at them both as they snore in chorus and I wonder in silent prayer to God how someone so broken as me deserves a love this pure.

Then it washes over me and I know. This forgiveness, all the forgiveness I have been given in my last months of struggle they are a proof of God's love. He has given it to me so that when I can someday confess my brokeness outloud people will be able to look at it and say... wow if someone that broken can have love... I can have it to.

I could never deserve what I have been given. I could never deserve what I have taken and what I have thrown away. Perhaps knowing that is what saves me most. But, in my dreams they dance around me... shadow figures around a fire in the fog and they laugh... you will never be good enough for this life they mock. Their words stab at me like jagged sticks and pound me till I am weak.

This stone upon my chest. This weight upon my back. It is my burden. It is never light. It is never visible but it is pure. It is the purity that the knowledge of salvation gives us. It is that earth spinning knowledge that despite all faults you are loved. It's scary, it's heavy, it's deep and it is constant. And for it, I am grateful even when I can't find the strength in my soul to acknowledge it.

In my panic, in my anxiety I lose grip on it for only moments. Then I am calmed. I hear the breeze rustle the trees outside or I hear the voice of my father in the back of my head. Sometimes I remember the tastes of my childhood or the sounds of the oceans ever constant waves. Something, something in the silence finds me and lulls me back to sleep. He is there in that moment. In the giggle of my sleeping child or the way my husband can crack a joke at the perfect moment.

He gaves this to me. What will I give back in return?